The Phase of Disasters on the Apocalyptic Seale

,According to the disclosures made by Jakob Lorber, natural events will also spread fear and misery in the Last Days. "There will be great gales over land and sea, and earthquakes. The sea will flood the shores in many places. Men shall be put in great fear and anxiety in expectation of the things that are to befall the earth." (Gr VIII 185, 4)
It has of course been noted that earthquakes, hurricanes and floods have been increasing for some time, yet quite different disasters are still to come, as may be seen from the following. Edgar Cayce, the visionary of the 20th Century also known as 'the sleeping prophet', correctly predicted many events, including the fact that in the early eighties, large sections of the North American West Coast, including the huge cities in the area, would drop into the Pacific. He also said that large parts of
Japan would go down into the Pacific at the same time. 261
Sceptics will write such prophesies off as figments of the imagination. For them we have scientific data which cause dismay in the way they confirm Cayces' predictions. Bild der Wissenschaft said the following in a report: "Seismic activity on earth is limited to a few narrow belts. The greatest number and the most powerful of earthquakes occur in the Circumpacific belt." (American West Coast and group of Japanese islands)
The earthquake which occurred in the unpopulated Alaska region on March 27, 1964 reached a maximum strength of 8.5. "Where it goes overland, the Pacific-North American displacement zone usually shows itself as a clearly identifiable longitudinal valley. Lateral shifts going in the same direction have in some places moved the valleys by up to 20 km." The notorious San Andreas Fault ... passes through California more or less parallel to the coast, from San Francisco to Cape Merdocino. "The area around Los Angeles in particular contains a whole system of minor Lateral faults." (The Los Angeles Ventura and Orange conurbation has 9 million inhabitants).
Huge subterranean plates are approaching one another and will one day meet. "For as long as the system remains in motion, a major earthquake is said to be unlikely in California." "The events becoming discernible here are, however, alarming. The movement of the plates has come to a stop, they have become blocked in the San Francisco area. Scientists are agreed that northern California must expect a violent earth shock the near future." "When the quake comes, the crash will be tremendous." 262
According to statements made by the geologists Donald L. Anderson in Science (217: 1097. 1982), the probability of a maior earthquake in California reaching force 7 or more, is growing. 263
The disaster Cayce predicted for Japan also came to appear in a new light in 1974 when satellite pictures released by NASA caused serious consternation in Japan. They showed that a deem fold in the earth crust cuts right through Japan; seismologist consider this to be a greater threat than the San Andreas Fault
in California. Scientists fear that Japan will not see the year 2000. 264
In August 1983, press reports stated that the Director of th Japanese Earthquake Observatory at the Central Weather Office, Kazuo Ihkahasi, had said that they knew where the next earthquake would be and were also able to predict its force, the only, and most difficult, question being when it would come.
Chou Maya, a clairvoyant born in Korea and living in Japa has predicted an unimaginable disaster for the Japanese Islands in the eighties; she is taken seriously in that country because other predictions she has made have come true. A report on the subject says: "The Japanese have a deep secret fear of disaster, as is evident from the fact that a book entitled 'The End of Japan has been at the top of the bestseller list in that country for weeks. It describes how gigantic earthquakes and volcanic eruptions will not merely devastate the country, but finally end with the whole island nation disappearing in the depths of the sea." 265Lorber's prophesies refer to the whole of Asia, and apart from Japan, China and other Asiatic countries will also have to reckon with very major disasters. The severe earthquakes China has suffered and the thirty years of war in Vietnam with their consequences, also for neighboring countries, show that the trend for disaster has already started in Asia. Lorber wrote: "Asia will be purified in a great Day of Judgement." (Gr IX 94, 12)
All the disclosures made by Jakob Lorber that have so far been quoted and discussed can be seen to be true in that either events have already occurred, or impending disasters are clearly evident in outline. Some of the prophesies quoted below refer to the final stage of the Last Days and are said to occur by the end of the century. In part these are difficult to interpret or not clear at all; they do show, however, that the events will be what in the Revelation to St. John is referred to as apocalypse.The catastrophe cannot be equated with the end of the earth or even the universe. The disclosures make it quite clear: "The earth will continue, as it did continue after Noah (the Flood), and it shall support the brighter of My children; only the filth that has grown far too much will be removed from it and end up in a place of purification, of which there surely is no lack in My great kingdom." (Gr V 110, 6)Jesus described the Last Day of the present human race to his disciples, predicting that "in not quite 2000 years from now" mankind "will have to be purified in the great fire of life." (Gr VIII 182, 5)
In those days, Jesus told certain things to a small group of individuals who listened with bated breath. They were not, however, allowed to pass this information on to the people. "Am I to note down on the parchment what you have told us today of the great judgement?" John asked the Lord, and was told: "Let that be, for in that time (our time) I shall reveal such things through the mouths of newly-awakened seers and prophets, to men who are of good will." (Gr X 157, 1-2) "I shall tell them everything that is now being said in My presence, through their hearts, into their pens." ". . . in those days, men will almost all be able to write and to read, and so they will be able to read and understand the new books. And this way of spreading My teaching, given new and pure from the heavens, will be able to reach people all over the world much more quickly and effectively than is possible now through messengers going out in My name and passing it on from mouth to mouth." (Gr IX 94, 4-5)
The words "purification of mankind through fire" have been used. This fire must be interpreted as partly real and partly allegorical. Jesus referred to four kinds or degrees of fire when speaking to the disciples.
The first kind of disaster is described as follows in New Revelation: "The fire shall be called great and general hardship, misery and sorrow, such as the earth has never seen before. Faith will die and love grow cold." "One nation shall rise against another and fight it with weapons of fire." "Tremendous scarcities will develop, starvation, many dreadful diseases, epidemics and plagues among men, animals and plants. Great storms will also arise, earthquakes..." "that is the first degree of fire." (Gr VIII 185, 2-6)
It is also said that "at that same time", technical progress, i.e., steam power based on coal and oil, electricity and weapons of war, will have reached a high level. (Gr VIII 185, 7-9) The firearms that have brought so much trouble to man are regarded as the second degree of fire, and referred to as "natural fire." Lorber's disclosures contain no reference to atomic weapons. The following words refer rather to the fact that the balance of terror which has now existed for many years will also continue in future. The remarkable statement reads as follows "Inventive men will go so far with their weapons that soon no nation will be able to go to war against another. For if two nations attack one another with such weapons they will easily and very soon destroy each other to the last man, and that surely will bring neither side true victory or gain. This is something their kings and the leaders of armies will soon come see..." (Gr VIII 185, 9)
The risks inherent in the population explosion and the world wide rise in unemployment seem much more serious to many experts than that of atomic war.
The third degree of fire is a spiritual fire. "It will consist in My waking more and more brightly illuminated seers and prophets several hundred years in advance" (among them Boehme, Swedenborg and Lorber). The prophets will have the task of proclaiming the teaching of Jesus anew, cleansed from ritual and false interpretation, and this will lead to the decline of the Catholic Church. The words used are that these prophets "shall open up for the church the road to its downfall." "Just as now (in Jesus' days) this night consists in heathenish, blind and meaningless ceremonies called public worship, it will also exist in that form in those days, but shall be destroyed and annihilated by the third kind of fire from the heavens." (Gr VIII 186, 3)

The fourth degree of fire will consist of great natural earth revolutions of all kinds and types, particularly in those places on earth where men have built over-great and magnificent cities where there shall reign the greatest arrogance, lovelessness, evil habits, false judgements, power, respect, indolence, and on the other hand also the greatest poverty, all kinds of misery and want (slums), brought about by overweening epicureanism (devotion to a life of ease and pleasure) on the part of the great and powerful." (Gr VIII 186, 4)"In those cities, all kinds of factories will also be set up on a large scale, out of excessive desire for gain, and instead of human hands, fire and water shall work in them, in a system of thousands of brazen machines most artfully made. They will be fired by very ancient earth coal, which men will obtain for themselves in over-great masses from the depths of the earth. When these goings-on shall have reached their highest point one day, through the power of fire, then the air of the earth in those areas will be filled too powerfully with combustible forms of ether which will soon ignite here and there and transform such cities and regions to dust and ashes, with many of their inhabitants. And there shall then no doubt also be a great and effective purification. Anything not reached by the fire created in this fashion shall be reached by great earth storms of all kinds and types in the places where it shall be necessary, for nothing shall be destroyed unless there is need." (Gr VIII 186, 56) Jesus expressly told the apostles: "That is of course a prediction for the still far distant future, but it shall not go unfulfilled." (Gr VIII 186, 9)
The following prophesies are probably the ones most difficult to interpret.
"When the number of pure and good people shall grow very small, as in Noah's day, the earth shall once again be visited with a general judgement, sparing neither men, nor animals, nor plants. Then proud men shall find their weapons that spew fire and death to be useless, and their strongholds and brazen roads along which they travel at the speed of an arrow shot in the air, for it shall come travelling out of the air as an adversary, and shall destroy them all who have done evil at all times. That shall be a true time for shopkeepers and money changers. What I have recently done at Jerusalem in the Temple to the money changers and pigeon sellers I shall then do on the large scale, over the whole earth, and shall destroy all the junk shops and money booths, through the adversary whom I shall send from the wide air spaces of the earth, like a flash of lightning with great noise and thunder. Truely, all the hosts on earth will fight against him in vain, yet the great invincible adversary shall do no harm to My few friends, and shall spare them for a completely new plant nursery, from which new and better people shall arise." (Gr V 108, 2-3)"There is a very great country far to the West around which the great world ocean flows on all sides, so that it is nowhere connected above the sea with the Old World. Starting from that country, the people shall first of all hear great things, and these shall also come up in the west of Europe, and out of it shall arise a bright radiance and reflection of light. The lights of the heavens shall meet, know one another and support each other." (Gr IX 94, 14)"The people will receive warnings through seers and special signs in the firmament, though only the few who are Mine will take heed, while the people of the world will consider it all merely strange effects produced by nature..." (Gr VI 150, 16)

On the meaning of the disclosure made concerning the "adversary from the air" and "lights in the heavens" there has been much speculation. Protagonists of the UFO theory connect the latter phrase with the unidentified flying objects innumerable people from all walks of life have observed in the sky, ojects popularly known as 'flying saucers'. They base their views on the following disclosure in New Revelation, believing that extraterrestrial people will come and intervene in the chaos among present-day men. "Now the time is coming when I shall open a view of the earth to the inhabitants of the greater planets, and make clear to them the standpoint of those who set out to look for Me and came to this earth. Then they shall grow greatly excited, and this excitement shall extend from Venus to Urka. Then it shall come about that 'the forces of heaven are shaken', and a tremendous call shall go out from all sides to the inhabitants of this earth . . ." (Wiederk. 69) Others interpret the disclosure to the effect that the inhabitants of other heavenly bodies will gave men spiritual help.
Repeated statements made in New Revelation leave no doubt but that other bodies in the universe are also inhabited by humans. The gospel words "I have other sheep, that are not of this fold" lack the precision, according to New Revelation, of those actually spoken by Jesus; the text has obviously been mutilated at a later date. The full version is: #400040"I have many other flocks that do not dwell in the sheepfold of the earth, but live in their own way on countless other earth and universal bodies. All these have to be guided to the sheepfold of life eternal." (GS I, 61, 9)
Scientific views have not been in accord with this in the past. Some years ago, however, they underwent a profound change. According to Dr. Ernst Stuehlinger, head of Science at NASA, the view that the universe contains innumerable bodies inhabited by beings gifted with intelligence has now gained widespread acceptance. There has been a profound change in this respect, compared to earlier concepts, the astronomer states. 266
Some of the disclosures made in New Revelation do not agree with scientific knowledge, yet it is evident from the case just quoted that this is no reason to doubt the credibility of New Revelation. Scientific discoveries are being made all the time, often leading to fundamental change of opinion.